


Chance Meetings and Others

by Nelja-in-English (Nelja)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Worms, Canonical Character Death, Coffee Shops, F/F, Flirting, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mind Control, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22636870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/pseuds/Nelja-in-English
Summary: The first time Oliver meets Jane, the first time Oliver meets Annabelle, the time he introduces them to each other.
Relationships: Annabelle Cane/Jane Prentiss, Oliver Banks & Annabelle Cane, Oliver Banks & Jane Prentiss
Comments: 16
Kudos: 46
Collections: The Magnus Archives Rare Pairs 2020





	Chance Meetings and Others

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quantumducky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/gifts).



Oliver meets Jane at work. They aren't very close, but he's still sad the day he looks at her and sees thousands of tiny tendrils entering her skin.

It would seem a painful enough death, and one he can't guess exactly (so many more holes than a firing squad would make), even without the peculiar dark brownish colour and the sickly sweet smell. When he touches them, they're not cold as they usually are, but it's not a comfort at all. It's the warmth of something rotting.

He doesn't tell her. He stopped trying to warn people - it serves no purpose. He doesn't even feel the itch, this time.

He tries to be nicer after this, but Jane is not easy to talk to. Even after small talk leads them to learn they're both gay, he's not sure it can lead to anything. Of course, he could pretend and offer to see her at next Pride, but he knows she won't make it.

The only surprise is that she's fired before she dies.

* * *

Surprisingly, Oliver meets Annabelle at work, too. 

A white guy is trying to explain to him how to read the Tarot. Oliver knows almost nothing about the subject, and still enough to know he's wrong. But if he can sell him a few decks, he guesses he has to pretend to listen politely.

"It's so fascinating!" a new customer tells the guy. Oliver wants to think she's mocking him or manipulating him in some way, because no one is that tasteless, but if so, she's good at pretending. "Could you take a card and tell me what it means for you?"

The guy is so happy to show off, but when he draws the Death card, he goes a bit pale. Which is stupid, as even Oliver knows this card doesn't literally mean death, and is far from the worst in the deck.

"Oh, let's try another one," says the girl with a nice smile. She's cute, with a large summer hat tilted on her head. "It will be better."

The guy draws Death three times more, after the deck is mixed, then angrily snaps and checks that it's a normal one. It is, and then he gets pale and goes away. Runs away, if you're not charitable about it.

Oliver glares at her. There's no death on her; not hers anyway, at first sight. But if he looks right, he can see through the hat an old one, that didn't take, a scar on her head. It’s not something he has already seen.

"You're doing my job," he comments.

"Yeah! Except I'm lying about it," she answers. "Am I?" 

Oliver nods. "Death all gets us in the end."

"Probably," the girl answers. "I'm Annabelle, by the way. I helped you, I want you to help me too."

She didn't really help, Oliver thinks. At least, not in any mystical sense. As a worker, he didn't mind her intervention.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to dreamwalk to Hilltop Road and tell me what you see."

So she knows. She knows more about him than he knows about her, certainly.

"What if it's private?"

"Then, the dream part is not really necessary, is it? We can save time."

Oliver feels his own feet betray him, starting to move towards the exit of the shop. It's annoying; it will be hard to explain to his boss. There's some part of the inexorability of it that he doesn't mind, but should. It encroaches upon something that should be his.

He doesn't resent the girl, though. Now he knows what she does, it's almost like she was sharing a secret. It explains how she did the card trick. 

He only dislikes what’s behind her.

"You're right," he answers. "I can just as well do it at night." He knows it will be terrible, but all his nights are.

She smiles again; she never stops smiling, but she can still intensify it. "I knew we would find some common ground."

"I'm Oliver," he says.

"I knew." She has the decency to point at his name tag, rather than mentioning all the investigation she must have needed to find him. "Thank you. I'm sure we will see each other soon."

They do. Sometimes she comes to see him at work, but most of the time, he feels his own feet lead him to some place he doesn't know, just to see her and have a chat. They're almost becoming friends. He doesn't know if it bothers him.

* * *

Oliver meets Jane a second time after she died. It's early at night in an almost empty street.

She's hiding her face, hunched on the street like a beggar, and he doesn't have enough memory to remember the red dress at first sight. But he recognizes the holes. He could never forget them.

It wasn't exactly death, waiting for her, he realizes. It was the things that live in her, breeding and dying all the time. 

"Jane," he asks. He's not sure. "You're alive. Are you alive?"

She raises her head. He almost recognizes her face, except that half of it has been eaten by crawling worms, poking out of it. It's awful to see, but it doesn't seem painful; she's smiling. 

"Are you afraid?" she asks, mimicking his tone, mocking him.

Oliver wonders. He talks to Annabelle from time to time, mostly when she has something to ask from him. But she likes to brag about being well-connected and understanding things, so she readily gives free information. Oliver thinks he knows what Jane is. He also knows she can't infect him, because he's spoken for. He doesn't think she can kill him.

He still feels, looking at her, something that's almost like fear, but not any concrete worry, just a weight setting in his stomach. He hates himself when he recognizes that maybe it's the fear that she actually escaped death.

"Aren't you cold?" he asks, frantically pretending to be human. He doesn't answer this question.

"No. I'm warm all the time. I'm not alone. I was cold with you all at the shop."

"Don't you want to eat?"

"I don't need to."

"Do you want a coffee?"

He can see the inner conflict. Jane was very much addicted to coffee. And then she bitterly laughs. "Of course, I will enter a coffee shop, looking like this. Or did you plan to order one for me? I'm not asking you for charity." She lowers her voice. "I pretend to be a beggar because this way people don't look at me, except when I want them to."

Oliver feels sorry for her, in a way that has nothing to do with death tentacles and little to do with worms. "I have a plan," he says, as he calls Annabelle. Usually she's the one asking things from him, but she might as well help him too, from time to time.

* * *

The waiters and the customers at the coffee shop are moving like puppets, cooking and serving as diligently as always, but their faces are tense and strained with tears.

Jane is staring at Annabelle with wary eyes. She didn't look at Oliver this way. But she didn't decline the coffee cup. She drinks slowly, and seems to enjoy it.

Annabelle has removed her hat for the first time since Oliver met her. He's not surprised to see the hole, mended with spider webs. He's surprised to see the number of small spiders dripping from it. She usually only has a few on her clothes at a time.

"They look hungry," Jane comments.

Oliver wonders if he didn't create some diplomatic incident. He knows the Spider and the Hive are different powers, Annabelle told him. She loves to say she's above Power conflicts, but that doesn't mean everyone is. Knowing Annabelle, it doesn't even mean that it's true. Oliver once asked if she controlled him because she couldn't control death, and she didn't answer.

"Oh, they are! Don't worry, they're well trained!" Annabelle answers cheerfully.

"Why are they out, then?"

"They just want to see you."

"But why?"

"Because you're cute, of course!"

Oliver thinks Jane can't blush anymore, but she lowers her eyes. It could be in embarrassment, or in anger.

"Why aren't you at home?" Oliver asks.

"Do I look like I pay rent?"

"You look like someone who can scare a landlord, for sure."

"Mine was evil," Jane answers.

"All landlords are evil," Oliver nods. "Especially in London."

"Hers especially so!" Annabelle comments. Once again, she smiles, because she loves to be mysterious about things other people don't know.

Oliver wonders: is he more evil than all of us? When we're feeding from death and fear and panicked servers who can only pretend all is well?

And then Annabelle takes Jane's hand, who looks at her in panic. Like removing her hand would be cowardly and keeping it here too dangerous. There are no spiders in it, or if they are, they are all inside.

"I don't need a girlfriend," Jane says. Oliver thinks there's nostalgia in her voice, like she would have, once.

"It's not about needing," Annabelle answers, and it could be very sweet, about deserving more than immediate needs, or it could be a threat about how Jane's wishes don't count.

Oliver thinks, here is Annabelle, who always gets what she wants, or likes to think she does. This is Jane, who was never so fulfilled with people as she is now with worms. He's looking at the flirting with morbid curiosity, and he's very glad he's gay, it makes the awkwardness a bit relatable at least.

When they leave the bar, he notices the girls left in the same direction.

* * *

After this, a lot of things happen. Oliver doesn't see Jane a lot, but Annabelle talks about her quite happily, says she loves how things progress.

And then Jane fights something that is too dangerous even for her, and doesn't survive. Oliver goes to see in the dream. She doesn’t look different from before, but he still knows he will never talk to her again.

Annabelle doesn't look sad the next time Oliver meets her, she never does, but she looks nervous, as if she's waiting for something big.

And also, of course, Oliver goes to the other end of the world, and dies, and comes back different. But he still comes back, not only to the world, but to London. Which is weird, but happens. Maybe some spider helped him.

"You will go to the Archivist," Annabelle says next time they meet. She talks about the new one; Oliver's warning did no good to Gertrude Robinson. "I want you to tell him your story. I want you to explain how you can choose not to die. It's your thing."

"Didn't he..." It seems a bit personal. Oliver doesn't know the details. "Didn't your girlfriend die because of him?" He wonders if Annabelle could have saved her. Maybe she's less powerful than she pretends to be. He doesn't want to think about the alternative, that she had reasons to let it happen. Personal reasons, or less personal ones.

Annabelle smiles, she always does. "I said I wanted him to be awake," she answers. "Not that I wanted him to be happy about it."


End file.
